Nach Süden was composed soon after Fanny’s revitalizing trip to Italy in 1839/40 and the recurrent themes of escape, changeability and freedom found in many of the Opus 10 songs reflect a new confidence in her creative talents. Migrating birds are used as a metaphor for the lure of warm southern climates—the paradise of the Romantic imagination. The boundless energy of the music is sustained by expansive vocal writing against the throbbing off-beat quavers in the accompaniment suggesting the heady flight of the birds. Then, suddenly, the music seems to soar with sheer elation at the thought of the ‘lands of eternal blossom’ and we can almost sense the fragrance of flowers in the beautifully tranquil piano link between verses. On the final line, ‘Jetzt aber hinaus!’, the music momentarily pulls on the reins only to spring into life again as the birds launch themselves into the sky once more.

from notes by Eugene Asti and Susan Gritton © 2000

The presence of Bach is felt throughout this song with its intense contrapuntal texture and improvisatory passages almost in the manner of an organ fantasia. The complaint (‘Du klagst’), against which the reproach is aimed, has its own theme throughout: a minor sixth followed by a morosely descending scale. The repetition of the word ‘Dahin’ and the breaking-up of the word ‘Wanderzug’ with its chain of Bachian suspensions stress the anxiety of the poet as the migrating birds pass overhead while he remains chained to the earth. The lament builds up with a repeated piano figure until a quicker version of the descending scale theme returns at ‘der Wald entlaubt’. The music continues to climb both in pitch and intensity until the sudden release into C sharp major just before ‘O klage nicht’ where the theme is this time stated in the major with a romantic surge of feeling from the piano. Although the ‘complaint’ theme is insistent it is overcome by the ‘reproach’ of the voice, where Fanny skilfully adopts its musical opposite: a falling major sixth. The reproach theme develops into the question: ‘Denkst du der Liebesglut?’ when the poet realizes that he himself is changeable too, like the migrating birds overhead. There is a measure of desperation in the threefold repetition of these words as if the poet’s remembered passion at first enflames, then injures him. After this outcry, the music comes to a complete halt on the last ‘Liebesglut’ and what follows is the numb reality of his now weary passion. The bare octaves of the opening return, this time pianissimo, and with it the complaint theme on the words ‘Wie nun so traurig ruht in deiner Brust’. Finally, the exhaustion and effort of trying to conjure up his lost passion is too great, and the music subsides into a dazed tierce de Picardie, so reminiscent of Fanny’s great hero, Johann Sebastian Bach.

from notes by Eugene Asti and Susan Gritton © 2000

These lines are taken from the first of three odes titled Abendbilder. Here we have an idyllic picture of unspoilt happiness: the end of a perfect day and the child sleeping calmly in her father’s arms. Fanny responds to this with a song of serene beauty, which perhaps recalls the harmony and gently rocking accompaniment of Schubert’s Ave Maria. As if to match the parallel descriptions in the poem, voice and piano join together in unison for the repeat verse which has a moment of exquisite harmony towards the end. There is a simplicity in this song which sets it apart from the highly chromatic songs framing it, and one which is not found in her other Lenau settings.

from notes by Eugene Asti and Susan Gritton © 2000

Once more we sense the influence of Bach with its experimental and sometimes seemingly improvised style, and there are similarities here to the Lenau setting, Vorwurf. This is another song about the pain of loss, the vine symbolic of the twists and turns of the poet’s mind as he struggles with feelings of abandonment. At the climax of the song (‘Alle Nächte, alle Tage’) the vocal part descends through agonized semitones from a high G while the piano weaves a thick chromatic texture over a D pedal point—an extraordinary passage. The song ends in quiet resignation.

from notes by Eugene Asti and Susan Gritton © 2000

Fanny’s last composition, completed one day before her untimely death, is a setting of the last three verses of Eichendorff’s well-known poem Durch Feld und Buchenhallen. It is one of six in a group of poems written in 1837 under the title Der Wandernde Musikant. The song was still on her piano when she died, and the last line of the poem, ‘Gedanken geh’n und Lieder bis in das Himmelreich’, is inscribed on her tombstone in the Alte Dreifaltigkeit Kirchhof in Berlin. The words are strangely prophetic, for as she wrote the song Fanny was full of life and hopes for her future. The music gives the impression of the fresh outdoors, as if we were riding through the mountains or observing the scene from a horse-drawn carriage. The spirit of her brother can be felt in this music, with its deftness of touch and texture not unlike his Lieder ohne Worte. (There have been several unsubstantiated but quite credible claims that Fanny was indeed the author of a number of Felix’s ‘Songs Without Words’—she certainly coined the phrase herself, and wrote many character pieces of her own using the same title.) Before the close of the song, the music winds down as if lost in contemplation, only to revive its energy for the final emphasis of ‘Fort bis ins Himmelreich’ with a brilliant top A. The piano postlude adapts the joyful opening theme and makes its heavenly ascent up the keyboard just as Eichendorff’s words and Fanny’s song travel to a spiritually higher place beyond even the mountains and the clear, blue sky.

from notes by Eugene Asti and Susan Gritton © 2000